JAN. 10, 2019: White House protest over government shutdown by furloughed as well as unpaid working federal employees, union members, contractors and supporters after rally at AFL-CIO. Some 835,000 of 2.1 million executive branch employees are reported to be in bargaining units. Image: Bob Korn/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffMembership in federal employee unions is up by about 80,000 under a Biden administration initiative for both the federal sector and the private sector, the White House has said.
An update on actions since the initial report of the administration’s Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment cites steps including OPM “working with agencies to better inform federal workers of their right to join a union” in job vacancy announcements, new employee orientation sessions and in regular communications. OPM also added data on union representation status to its FedScope database.
“OPM implemented ten strategies agencies are using to support worker organizing and bargaining in the federal sector. Since the initial strategies were announced, OPM developed a survey tool to comprehensively track agency progress on implementing the strategies, and sent the survey to relevant agencies in January 2023,” it said.
It also cited the FLRA’s role in creating a resource “where workers and employers can learn about the union advantage and examples of successful organizing and labor-management partnerships”; that agency’s collaboration with others “to help the parties reach an initial collective bargaining agreement when workers first organize”; and loosening of prior restrictions on access to federal facilities by union organizers.
Last year’s task force report said that aside from the Postal Service with its higher rates of union membership, some 835,000 of 2.1 million executive branch employees were in bargaining units but that at the time there were more than 300,000 federal workers eligible to be represented by a union but were not.
It’s worth noting that bargaining unit coverage is not necessarily the same as the total number of dues paying union members, and other factors can make it hard to get the exact number of those “in a federal employee union” – for example federal unions such as the AFGE sometimes representing non-federal employees.
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